We’re about to head out and vote today for France’s next president, and by the time you, my dear subscribers, receive this posting the results will already be known. Will France choose a socialist president? This seems likely but we won’t know until tonight.
When I came to France in 1989 as a grad student enrolled at the purposely outskirted and ideologically left-winged Université de Paris VIII, Mitterrand’s socialist government had been in power for 8 years. Back then, the presidential mandate lasted 7 years (compared to today’s 5-year mandate) and Mitterrand clocked in two, taking his reign all the way to 1995. Coming from a conservative America still steeped in the dread of the cold war, I discovered a whole new territory of political action and debate, far more open, plural and intellectually lively to what I had known in the U.S. While Parisians shocked me with their lack of civic sense (dog shit smeared sidewalks, line-cutting, pushing without pardon), they nevertheless fiercely believed in carrying the collective “burden” of universal healthcare, a strong public school system that starts at age 3, and a superb state-run crèche system that allows women to continue their careers. I’ll never forget the pie graph (or camembert as they call them here) on my first tax form providing the break-down of how our tax money would be allocated: education was the largest budget! Education!! The priorities of the French could not have been more in contrast to those of my compatriots whose homologous pie would give its biggest piece to the Pentagon. It seemed to me the French generally made less money than their American or British counterparts, but their quality of life proved altogether better: they had five weeks of paid vacation, health care, early retirement, strong labor laws protecting the worker, intellectuals who spoke out in the media, films they considered art and artists they considered valuable. Add to this list the excellent food and drink, the beauty of Paris, the gorgeous coasts, the stupendous Alps and the castle-peppered rural lands in between…
Now, if it had been my destiny to be a banker I most certainly would not have stayed: bigger money can be made elsewhere. But as someone with an investment in literature and education where the returns are notoriously small, I’ve chosen to live in a country that has, for the most part, stuck to its collective commitments so that the disparities between the wealthy and the poor are not as grotesquely apparent as they are in the U.S. and Great Britain. France maintains a safety net the strands of which represent the beliefs and desires of its citizens. Sarkozy in the name of economic liberalism has begun to unravel this net claiming its maintenance too costly. Of course it is expensive, yet it is surely cheaper than sending troops to Afghanistan. Whether or not to maintain the social cushion is ultimately a question of priorities, of deciding together the kind of society we want for ourselves. Let us see how the French will express their priorities today.